Waymo raises $2.25 billion in investment

Waymo has raised $2.25 billion in its first public investment round. Until now, all the money came from parent company Alphabet. The external money flows must have the additional effect of Waymo working in a ‘more disciplined’ way.

The money comes from investment funds, pension funds, but also from AutoNation, which maintains Waymo’s fleet. The statement about discipline within the company comes from Ruth Porat, chief financial officer at parent company Alphabet. She made the statement at an investor conference, Reuters writes. Alphabet is believed to have invested billions of dollars in Waymo. Porat’s statements show that he welcomes ‘multiple votes at the table’ for the extra administrative discipline.

Waymo is one of the companies working on developing fully autonomous driving cars. According to Waymo’s own announcement, the first level 4 autonomous vehicles are now rolling off the production line in Detroit. In addition, the company’s vehicles have traveled a total of more than 32 million kilometers in practice and more than 16 billion kilometers in simulations.

The autonomous taxi service is currently not widely available, even in the US. It remains with limited testing in specific US cities so far. At the moment, Waymo One, the passenger taxi service, is available in the state of Arizona. The self-driving truck division is now called Waymo Via. Other companies doing a lot of work in the field of self-driving cars are Uber and Tesla.